Sounding Lead

anonymous, c. 1810

Dieplood met strop. Het bovendeel is van ijzer en heeft een gleuf en gaten voor de bevestiging van een telwerk. Onder in een gat voor het nemen van bodemmonsters.

  • Artwork typesounding lead
  • Object numberNG-MC-1330
  • Dimensionslength 125.5 cm
  • Physical characteristicslead, iron and rope

anonymous

Sounding Lead

? Netherlands, c. 1810

Conservation

  • Ab Hoving, juni 2010: retouched

Provenance

...; transferred from the Ministerie van Marine (Department of the Navy), The Hague, to the museum, 1883

Object number: NG-MC-1330

Entry

Sounding lead with a strap. The upper part is made of iron with a slit for the register.

Sounding leads are used to determine the depth of the water below a ship. This type of a deep-sea hand lead was already in use as early as the seventeenth century.1On the engraving De Stat Olinda de Pharnambuco, verovert bij den Generael Hendrick C. Lonck, anno 1630 by Claes Jansz Visscher (1586-1652), c. 1630, a sailor can be seen using a similar, but smaller, hand lead for charting the depths of the Olinda roadstead: inv. no. RP-P-OB-78.197. The lead was connected to a long rope with markings to measure the number of fathoms of water. In the bottom a hollow is positioned, which, when coated with some tallow, can be used to take samples of the seabed.

Literature

J.M. Obreen et al., handwritten inventory list for items 944 to 1431, 1884, manuscript in HNA 476 RMA, inv. no. 1089, no. 1330

Citation

J. van der Vliet, 2016, 'anonymous, Sounding Lead, Netherlands, c. 1810', in J. van der Vliet and A. Lemmers (eds.), Navy Models in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/20054232

(accessed 9 December 2025 07:21:52).

Footnotes

  • 1On the engraving De Stat Olinda de Pharnambuco, verovert bij den Generael Hendrick C. Lonck, anno 1630 by Claes Jansz Visscher (1586-1652), c. 1630, a sailor can be seen using a similar, but smaller, hand lead for charting the depths of the Olinda roadstead: inv. no. RP-P-OB-78.197.